


Atlas Crumbling

by hushlittlewolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 15:44:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hushlittlewolf/pseuds/hushlittlewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is heavy along the faltering line of your shoulders. </p><p>Or</p><p>A poem about Derek Hale and everything he's been forced to shoulder in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atlas Crumbling

** _Atlas Crumbling_ **

  **I.** The world is heavy in ways science, or magic, cannot measure.

    You would know. The weight has been pressing down on your shoulders

                    for years now.

    At night, you hear your spine, strong as it may be, creak and splinter.

    You wake, most days, with the taste of blood in the back of your throat.

 

 **II.**         There was a time when it was not so.

       Just like there was a time when the     

                     staircase banister did not

                          crumble between your fingers,

leave blackened ash streaked across your skin like the caresses

                                                           of ghosts.

A time when your mother’s favorite rug was lush beneath your sleeping cheek

and smelled of that too pungent perfume one of Laura’s boyfriend’s had bought for her.

                      Twelve years old, you stole it to spite your older sister

                       and broke it trying to escape her wrath.                                             

Now, as you toe the charred edges, the tattered remains, you wish for the time

                 where the room stunk of that

                                              fucking perfume and not soot and ash and _guilt_.

        As your spine groans under the pressure, you wish for the time where this place felt like home and not the tomb it has become.

 

 **III.** Young, and innocent, and not your father’s favorite,

your mother took it upon herself to instill in you a sense

                                                                                                                       of being.

                 “Derek,” she called you, named you, placed that first yoke upon your tender shoulders. “It means ‘ruler of the people.’”

 You glanced at your father that day—flash of red in his eyes and the way his skin 

          strained to keep all that strength wrapped inside—and wanted his power.

                                                     You _still_ want it.

 After all these years, all you’ve found is a hollow title and a crushing sense of failure.

 

 **IV.** Alpha. That is what they call you now. They—

     your motley pack of mangy, forsaken, wayward teenagers. 

You turned them to save them. You turned them for power. Thinking one motive would outweigh the other;

                   _absolve you._

                                               As the blood of your betas dries beneath your claws, as you

                                  bury the body of a sixteen year old girl under a tombstone made of

                                  nothing but her initials carved into a fallen tree, out passed the edges

                                  of her world— _fucking Christ she was just a child what were you **thinking** —_

                                  you know absolution is not something you deserve.

 

  **V.** You’ve seen it in glimpses—in the shards of the bathroom mirror embedded in your fist; in the silver flash of the Argent girl’s blades,

         slick with the crimson of Isaac’s blood,

         slick with the scarlet of your guilt;

You saw it reflected back at you in the Kanima’s slitted eyes, and you see it now,

                                    floating, disembodied,

                                                           in this Alpha’s own, blind orbs.

Impaled on your own shortcomings, you cannot look away.

 

 **VI.** It breaks the laws of physics.

           Then again, those are mortal laws, and you are not bound in such. Still,

this should be impossible, this curvature of your spine,

this downward

                              slope of your shoulders, like a broken pack mule, crushed beneath 

                              it’s load.

Your bones groan beneath your skin; two hundred and six beams of calcified matter

and they strain, audibly, under the pressure of

_Alphapackleaderderekyou’llneverbeyourfather._

You ignore the doubting hisses at the back of your skull, the sidelong glances

    of your remaining betas. "Derek," your mother named you. You will succeed because

                          it is your birthright.

  

 **VII.** It takes you far too long to realize

                         you are not Atlas. You were not made to endure.

                           You’ve been trying, all this time, to keep the sky and the earth from

colliding because you had convinced yourself it was your

                                                      duty, your

                                                      punishment

                                                                    for siding with the wrong people

                                                                         (Kate might be dead but so is your family _burnedashgone_ ) and surviving the inferno.

                       Not a Titan, and not strong enough to stop fate, or just hapless circumstance,

your spine finally snaps in an abandoned mall with blood in your teeth and howls

echoing, reverberating like a funeral knell, in your ears.

 

 **VIII.**   The fall is almost easy. It is almost a relief.

Tumbling, weightless, through the air, your spine feels straight, your shoulders

                                                                                                   b r o a d.

                                 Blood is metallic on your tongue and the world is heavy in ways

                                 science and magic cannot explain. It is almost a blessing to leave it.

 

 **IX.** Your eyes open on a gasp and pain comes in

             like a f l o o d.

     Laughter grates through your skull, herald by the tap of a cane against your cheek

and the words, “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you Derek?”

 

 **X.** Splintered spine and broken shoulders, you remember absolution

                                                                                     is not something you deserve.

         

                        

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so I wrote this after "Frayed." I realized now that Derek's father wasn't the Alpha and such but I still like the poem so I posted it here. 
> 
> My Tumblr: http://the-wild-wolves-around-you.tumblr.com


End file.
